Upon the initiation of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against multiple Israeli officials, Israel’s Finance Minister and Minister for the Ministry of Defense, Bezalel Smotrich, who is among the Israeli officials targeted in the new arrest warrants, vowed in a press conference on 19 May 2025 that he will sign evacuation orders for Khan Al-Ahmar in preparation for its demolition. He also announced that he will take revenge on the Palestinian Authority. In the same conference, Smotrich praised his role in advancing the establishment of more than 100 new settlements and 160 agricultural outposts in the West Bank [1].
Khan Al-Ahmar is a small Palestinian Bedouin village located in eastern Jerusalem. The inhabitants of the village are from the Jahalin tribe, who were forcibly displaced from the Negev desert’s lands in 1951. The tribe then moved to the location on which the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim was later constructed and was displaced again. Following their displacement from that area, they resettled in their present location.
The threats to Khan Al-Ahmar are not recent; in May 2018, the Israeli High Court approved the evacuation of the village. It ruled that the state could “remove the unlawful structures located in the Khan Al-Ahmar compound and relocate their occupants to an alternative site.”[2] However, the execution of the orders was delayed due to international pressure and opposition [3]. The selection of Khan al-Ahmar signals a serious escalation, particularly in light of the village’s strategic location along the Jerusalem–Jericho corridor and its centrality to ongoing settlement expansion plans, notably the E-1 plan.
The plan seeks to physically connect Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem. It would result in the division of the West Bank into a northern and a southern region, thereby undermining the possibility of a continuous and territorially viable Palestinian state. Additionally, it would intensify the fragmentation and isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank [4].
The plan encountered widespread international opposition and was largely suspended. However, in 2026, Israel advanced the E-1 Plan with a tender for the construction of 3,400 housing units. The recent development is not the first time that Israel has used the Khan Al-Ahmar as a method of retaliation against Palestinians; in 2012, nine Israeli ministers decided to renew the construction and planning according to E-1 as a response to the UN resolution on the recognition of Palestine as an Observer state [5].
Legal Framework & Analysis
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2024 Advisory Opinion, titled “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”, reaffirmed that Israel has no right to control the lands entitled to the Palestinian Territory, concluding that Israel’s presence in the oPt is unlawful under international law. It clearly stated that “Israel is not entitled to sovereignty over or to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The Opinion also highlighted that Israel’s practices and policies in areas C and East Jerusalem lead to permanent and indefinite changes on the ground.
Simultaneously, it stressed that the contiguity and unity oPt of the Palestinian Territory must be maintained [6]. Accordingly, through fragmenting the Palestinian Territory and supporting the settler expansion in Area C, the E-1 Plan stands in clear violation of the principles articulated in the ICJ’s 2024 Advisory Opinion.
The evacuation of Khan Al-Ahmar violates the International Criminal Law (ICL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which prohibit the forcible transfer of protected persons from territory under occupation. In this regard, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies forcible transfer and unlawful population displacement as war crimes and crimes against humanity under certain circumstances. Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies “the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory” as a war crime. In addition, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is one of the central IHL provisions, stated that “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power …. are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”[7] The Convention recognizes a narrow exception allowing evacuation where “the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.” However, particularly in light of the retaliatory intentions of Smotrich following the ICC arrest warrant proceedings, the planned evacuation of Khan Al-Ahmar remains unlawful, unjustified, and incompatible with international humanitarian law.
Hence, alongside the humanitarian consequences that would result from the demolition of the village and the forcible displacement of its residents, the destruction of Khan Al-Ahmar must also be understood within the broader framework of territorial fragmentation and settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territory. The village’s strategic location within the E-1 corridor renders its removal politically and geographically significant, as it would facilitate the territorial linkage between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem while further isolating East Jerusalem from the remainder of the West Bank. Such measures undermine the contiguity and viability of a future Palestinian state and reinforce irreversible demographic and geographic changes on the ground.
This effectively amounts to annexation, which is absolutely prohibited under international law, notably under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that protected persons in occupied territory shall not be deprived of the protections of the Convention “by any annexation by the Occupying Power of the whole or part of the occupied territory.” Additionally, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 in 2016 “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity.” Accordingly, the implementation of the E1 plan and the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar further reinforce an unlawful situation created through settlement expansion, territorial fragmentation, and de facto annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.